RTL-SDR Blog V3 R860 RTL2832U 1PPM TCXO SMA Software Defined Radio (Dongle Only) (Black)

Hey, if you dont know how to use a SDR, I highly suggest to look up a guide on how to start receiving with a SDR. I think its a pretty good unit, and as the title says, it's way better than the NooElec one that is in the picture. Now all the reviews that say its a terrible device, those are 95% of the time just user error. I've been using SDR stuff on and off for about 3 years, and there is a little bit of setup required, as with everything. Now I've been farting around with the NooElec one, but I decided to get a little bit of a step up. This has HF reception, just not very good in comparison to a proper transceiver. Its a good idea to get a proper antenna if you want to do some serious HF stuff. An alternate idea is to grab a balun, and a roll of speaker wire and split it so you have 2 wires then put it up as a dipole. And, you can even hook it to your rain gutters if they are metal, and use that as a receiving antenna. Cheap, but effective. Some people receive weather satellites with these, ive had some luck with the NooElec unit but this one just blows it out of the water. Ive used it to pick up images from NOAA weather satellites, and it does an incredible job of that, and my setup utilizes a LNA that can be powered by the built in Bias-T. If it gets too hot for your liking, you can ziptie a heatsink with a thermal pad to the back of it and cool down the RTL-SDR. I made sure to take a high res pic so you can look closely at the differences between the two SDRs.

I am extremely impressed with this receiver. I have been involved with ham radio and short wave listening for over 50 years and have worked in the two-way radio field almost that long. I put the RTL-SDR through its paces both on the test bench and in my home ham station. I am amazed at how well it performs. One thing must be understood. It doesn't matter if the radio is a $20 USB dongle or a $5000 deluxe receiver; the radio is only as good as the antenna you connect it to. At home I connected the RTL-SDR to the same antennas I use with my $1300 Icom transceiver. I could find no signals, that I could hear on the Icom, that the dongle couldn't hear. Also, with the adjustable bandwidth control in the SDR# software, the dongle did almost as good of a job of separating signals in the crowded ham bands. The receiver is NOT a no brainer. You must be able to follow the setup instructions on the quick start page. You need decent antennas appropriate for the frequency ranges you want to listen to. An antenna that works great at VHF and UHF "scanner" frequencies is useless for reception at short wave or AM broadcast frequencies. A basic understanding of how communications receivers work helps a lot. You will however need to learn the software and a lot of its features are not "intuitive." The RTL-SDR is, in my opinion, the most bang for your buck of any receiver ever made. Bob Mason WB8CAC

I've only used this for a couple hours now, but man was this easy to set up and awesome to use. It is very fun to visually see and navigate through the radio signals. It took me less than 10 minutes using their quick start guide on rtl-sdr.com/qsg I gained confidence before purchasing this device from all the positive reviews of course and mainly their website. The website is easy to navigate and I was overjoyed to see how detailed the troubleshooting guide was, so if I ran into any problems I could very likely find a solution. It is nice to see such a detailed troubleshooting page with pretty much any possible problem that could happen with this device. Anytime I jump into a DIY project i'm afraid I will have to use google for 3-4 hours to find a solution. I only ran into one problem during set up with the software and that was on the step that said to run the batch file in the extracted folder of the SDR# software. Probably because I am on a Domain computer with security settings that prevent batch files from running. Well in that same step on their quick start guide they had a link to manually install the drivers instead which only took a minute to do. I followed the rest of the steps. Plugged in the RTL-SDR with my ICOM female SMA antenna from my HAM radio and sure enough it came alive instantly. I was amazed at how easy it was to set up. I turned up the gain in the software and I could start finding random HAMs in my area and various repeaters. I couldn't find any HF signals probably due to my antenna. Their website suggests getting a planar disk antenna or a discone antenna for listening on nearly any frequency between 25Mhz and 1300Mhz. My HAM rubber duckie antenna with this picked up a lot of signals from local FM radio, 136Mhz-900Mhz. This is definitely an awesome buy for the price of $17. I just bought a Uniden BC125AT handheld radio scanner for $110 earlier this week. It is a handy device since it is portable, but it has only a small portion of the frequency range compared to SDR. For $110 it isn't worth it for what it does so I am definitely returning it after playing with this thing. I'm excited to experiment more with it to find other neat uses for SDR. I highly recommend getting a USB extension cable for this device so you can have enough cable to work with. I happened to have a 10ft USB Amazon extension cable I bought a couple months ago that works perfectly for this. Since I am using this with a rubber duckie antenna it is about a foot long sticking out of the computer. Not an ideal location for this since it wouldn't fit well behind the computer and I would likely break it if it was sticking out the front of the computer. It would even be good for a laptop since all laptop USB ports stick straight out the side. A USB extension cable allows you to place the device and antenna in a much better location. My last recommendation for full use of this is a discone antenna as the company suggests or something better than a simple rubber duckie or whip antenna. This thing is too cool to only use it with a rubber duckie. Just buy it!

Update: Audio Fix Found; reported solution to Tom The Dilettante & TheSmokinApe's videos on Youtube. Rating Update: previously, 1-star; updated to 4-stars; would have given it 5-stars if the installation process wasn't so convoluted regarding manual intervention of drivers which can cause similar problems. Performance and capabilities, as well as add-on applications are very impressive for the price. Does not substitute for a real HAM or similar high-end radio/amplifiers/huge antennas, but that's not a valid comparison to make. I know those with the high-end radios, but that's not my intentions with this device. Learning more about it, sure, but this is a great alternative that doesn't require a huge investment or giant antenna most HOAs or apartments won't allow outside/visible. Regarding the "paDeviceUnavailable" error message I was getting when I selected the RTL-SDR USB and hit "Play". That followed with crashing my audio and video on Youtube as well, where it told me I had an audio renderer error, but it also refused to play the video (without the audio) as well. The error message received on trying to play a Youtube video was regarding that renderer error but said to reboot my machine. I found that instead of rebooting I could just refresh the browser and it plays audio & video just fine. The solution so far, is this: Select Audio Output to, instead of Microsoft MME Speakers, ...to ASIO4ALLv2 (or any other output device other than the default) and it suddenly worked! I had an ElGato video/audio capture card and had to install some virtual audio devices a few years ago which may be related to the problem. Anyway, for now it works as long as I change the Audio Output to the other 'device'. Thanks for the detailed video, right to the point and with good links and content! I posted the same message on TheSmokinApe's Comments section in case anyone else runs into the same or similar issue. Previously: I have no idea how anyone got this system to work, clearly there is a major discrepancy. I have a relatively high end laptop for CAD modeling that works great but cannot get past this very simple starting point of running the SDR software initially, no matter how many instructions I follow to a "T". Another reviewer showed a completely different software package SDRConsole and that is the only way I can get this SDR dongle to do anything at all. I was a bigger fan of the originally touted software SDRSharp but it wipes out my computer's ability to even play any videos' audio when I follow all of the instructions. I will give it 1 week and will otherwise send it back baffled out how this is such a well supported SDR unit but it can cease to function on a relatively solid laptop with an experienced engineer who runs software and hardware every day as a job and at home.

pretty cool little bugger, never used one before so i am still learning be aware they run hot, not hot enough to burn your fingers or anything, but one might think something is wrong when that is just how hot they are in operation. i bought a "ham it up" unit to down convert so that i could receive sw and ham bands below 25mhz along with the AM broadcast bands, without which this unit does not have the ability to resolve. also have to download the drivers and software to make it work on your computer, i use it with windows 10 and youtube "smokingape" or "smokinape" is your friend when it comes to getting this thing running. i am using it with a 9:1 balun and a 30ft long wire antenna inside so it is not at all optimal, but it seems to work for proof of operation. my next move will be getting a better antenna and mounting it outside. my use will be in the shortwave bands. so far it is great on the FM broadcast band, and with my poor antenna ok on AM broadcast, and somewhat works on shortwave below about 11mhz or so... i think the antenna is the shortfall. i would recommend it to anyone wanting to try an sdr

Ok. I've been an amateur radio freak for over 30 years. I have owned amazing equipment, Kenwoods, Icoms, Yaesus. Huge yagi antennas. Massive rotators. Huge coax cables. Spents thousands just mounting equipment. I have worked all continents, all States and every area of the world. I've worked CW and PSK. This SDR dongle truly is a breakthrough for people who love the magic of radio. First, it shouldn't work as good as it does. A dongle coming out of a computer just invites a tremendous amount of electrical noise from the internals of the computer. Second, a $30 dongle should not give you such impressive reception at this price point on the receiving end. No way. But it does. Forget about all that you know about radios. SDR is amazing. Take an old Windows computer, pop the dongle in, load up some open source software and attach an antenna. Make note, all of this can be improved, but to get started it's amazing what this simple set up will give you. Gone is a physical radio that is expensive, weighs alot, and cannot be updated much, if at all. If you're a radio enthusiast like me, you'll have to admit that everything you knew about radio now has to be relearned. I want to thank the people who make these dongles, and for the incredible enthusiasts out there putting there software up on the internet for free. What a wonderful way to tune in the world. Amazing. Just amazing.

you can never get as good as this sdr. works perfect and i run it on my 18 foot cb antenna A99 no not antron 99 its a A99 it has 5 sections for easy tear down and made for 27mhz but this sdr works wonders on it. its like only having a 400 mhz antenna but better. i can pick satellites and 1mhz ham bands even radio from 88 to 108 mhz. dam if it had the money i would buy a hell of a lot more. they are that perfect im going to run one in my car via my windows 10 pro stick i have in my blu-ray player in my car sterio plus my radio is connected to a 3000wts amp and i also have a cb and ham hand held transmitter in car but i wish i could afford more even if they send me demo units i would be happy as well. stay away from those cheap units i got one and sent it back it wouldn't work. you must get this unit as its garmented to give you ears like you have never had them before... !!!!!!!!!!! pls is there a place that i can get demo units of this stick. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! if you dont get this stick you will regret not buying this sdr unite. plus you will feel like a dick if you get a cheap and nasty unit that DONT have RTL-SDR.com on it.

It is amazing what this little device (and the appropriate software) can do! I use the free version of SDR# to scan and listen to the VHF / UHF bands. The reception and sensitivity are excellent in this range. HF, on the other hand, doesn't work so well. I've never had much luck below 30Mhz. You'll need an excellent antenna and maybe even a preample to use this for HF, and personally I think there are better custom solutions for HF reception. But as a VHF / UHF software defined radio, this little dongle is absolutely amazing! Pro Tip - use a long USB cable to add some distance between the dongle and your computer. For the best reception, plug the dongle directly into your antenna and use the USB cable in place of coax. This both removes line loss and greatly reduces any RFI from your computer!

Great fun amazing product recommend for anyone interested in listening to whats going on around them in the world

si eres radioaficionado y no quieres invertir mucho, es para ti

Everything works as intended. Product arrived on time.

Excelente, entrega rápida e eqpto funcionando

Wszystko dotarło jak w opisie, jakość wykonania jest ok 100% jest to V3 nie chińska podróbka